AWmusic

One could argue Yndi Halda fulfills the elements of post rock so well that their sound becomes all too conventional. The thing about post rock is sometimes you have a hard time matching bands to their tunes, unless they have some featured element that stands them out (e.g. Sigur Ros’ frontman’s falsetto, Mogwai’s unintelligible vocals…oh wait, they’re all pretty unintelligible…). I have to commend Yndi Halda, though, for some excellent riffs and ability to control the instrumentation without going overboard.

Their tunes usually feature a mellow start of soft violin or guitar picking that slowly progresses into a full-blown orchestra of drums, strings, piano, and distorted guitars, and then ends of with more mellow strings and such (crescendo-decrescendo). The only vocals you hear are chambered la-la-laings to support the instrumentation. All of their tunes are more than 11 minutes long, their longest song lasting 20 minutes. You’ll probably not realize the length of each song as Yndi Halda plays through them smoothly, like a soundtrack of your life on a cool summer day just minutes before sunset (but you’re really just sitting on your ass with headphones on, scratching your belly, having a couple of beers, and possibly typing a music review). No awkward funny business here, Yndi Halda can definitely play meditative pieces.

The band plans to tour North America (and by North America, they really mean the US) this year. Hopefully with a lot of response to their EP from Canadian fans, they’ll make it up here, too.

As their songs are pretty long, I recommend visiting their myspace to listen to two of their tracks, one of which is my favourite, “Dash and Blast.”

Visit the band’s webstore to purchase their album.

More reading: Read Drowned In Sound’s Review of Enjoy Eternal Bliss
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